Book 23: Hieroglyph

Hieroglyph: Stories and Visions for a Better Future

Edited by Ed Finn and Kathryn Cramer

This book is the product of a concerted effort to produce optimistic, forward-thinking, and inspirational science fiction in the vein of some of the genre's most influential past masters. Given all of the recent turmoil surrounding the Hugo Award nominations, I was pleased to note the inclusion of contributions from a diverse array of authors who, unsurprisingly, offered a nice variety of futuristic visions. From the melting polar ice caps to megacities and far-flung extra-planetary colonies, from political science to quantum physics, Hieroglyph's contributors ask readers to imagine what might be possible, if only we put our minds to the task. While some of the stories develop a bit of a didactic edge, the collection feels remarkably balanced; as a whole, it values innovation and creative thinking over the promotion of any particular viewpoint. If certain themes, such as the potential short- and long-term effects of climate change, do recur, I suspect that it is because they loom large in the public imagination and not because the authors or editors have a particular axe to grind. Even when they might, the politics cut both ways; I found myself completely agreeing and vehemently disagreeing with different authors' implications, but each one made me reconsider my position, however dearly held, in a different light. Even those stories that do revolve around similar premises, like the pair involving towers that reach into the upper atmosphere, approach their similar topics from different angles, creating vastly different reading experiences.

Despite its thematic focus on an inventive, mad scientist brand of science fiction, Hieroglyph's great strength is in its authors' impressive versatility. Very few of these tales are straightforward stories of an unambiguously better world, and many grapple with complex ethical and scientific issues as thoroughly as the best works in other genres. Even more interesting is the sheer variety of problems and solutions envisioned by the collection's authors, as well as the range of academic disciplines they utilize in exploring their imagined futures. The book has a wide potential audience, bridging the gap between English majors and particle physicists, and everyone in between. The science is real, yet accessible, and most stories convincingly present both the whiz-bang innovations and the literary elements like plot and characterization. Some authors might concentrate more on their big ideas than on the story at hand, but even then, their ideas are usually enough to sustain the narrative; only one or two offerings seem to drift away, lost in their science without a sufficient human anchor to make them resonate.

In the end, reading this collection- even when its stories become a bit too preoccupied with their own brilliance- is to be excited and electrified by the possibilities it presents, an effect fostered by the editors and deliberately triggered in nearly every story. Each flows naturally into the next, especially when they share few common characteristics; the mental reset required by such juxtapositions feeds into the intellectual energy the book thrives on- and rewards. Hieroglyph proves (much to the chagrin, I suspect, of a certain particularly vocal segment of fandom) that grounded scientific speculation, plot-driven protagonists, and inquisitive, inward-looking, and, yes, literary writing can coexist in science fiction; when they meet, the results can be indistinguishable from magic.

Grade: A